Red: A Captain's Colours, Pt II
by StJost
Summary: The captain panted, knife still in hand. The intruder fell to the floor with a dull thud. Anna, stilled by shock, watched as Simcoe took a seat at the table, his night shirt blooming with crimson beneath a jagged slash in the linen. He pulled a handkerchief from the pocket of his breeches and wiped the blood from his eyes as he considered her.


Captain Simcoe did insist that Anna required a protector.

It's the end of winter in 1777. John Graves Simcoe has returned to the Strong house and Anna must tolerate his presence. She finds that, in a time of wandering rogues using the threat of war as a cover, it is more useful to have a soldier in the house than she would care to admit.

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Anna clutched at the thin needle with a handkerchief, the candle flame flickering in the dark kitchen. She held it carefully to the base of the flame, adjusting her grip as the needle shone red hot. It was laid in a small bowl of water, sizzling ever so slightly as it dipped under the surface. Laying down the handkerchief, she took up a length of waxed thread and again seized the needle, now cool. Carefully, she threaded the eye and pulled the thread through until its length was halved.

"You needn't apply more pressure; the bleedin' has waned," she advised the back of the man seated at the stool before her. Slowly, he removed his hand from its uncomfortable position near his spine, taking with it a blood-soaked cloth to reveal a long, but shallow laceration. The flesh of his back was stained red. "Rum?" she inquired. Quietly, his head shook. Initially she had attributed his silence and sluggishness to interrupted sleep and blows to the head. Anna could see even in the firelight, though, that his freckled cheeks were paler even than usual, his posture slumped. Another look at the trail of red from his path through the house argued against this initial hypothesis.

She took his rejection of drink as cue to begin. Seizing the short needle in her right hand, she reached out with her left, touching the inflamed skin gingerly. She could feel him shake subtly at the contact and gave him a moment of calm before beginning her undesirable work. Laying the needle abrupt of the wound, Anna wasted no time in pressing firmly into the skin flanking it. Captain Simcoe let out a strangled grunt at the new distress, muffled by the handkerchief stoppering his bleeding nose. A small drip of blood trickled away from the needle, slicking the waxy thread. Anna probed the sharp point upwards through the opposing side of the wound. His breathing had quickened, but she saw few other signs of unmanageable distress as she pulled the thread through the needle's path. Her delicate fingers tied a small fisherman's knot and the wound narrowed. Crossing the needle back over, she pressed firmly again a short distance from her first stitch. The only response this time came as a brief tensing before he slumped back to his position at the table. This pattern continued nine more times and the gash shrunk in breadth until Anna pulled the final pass of the thread through and tied it neatly off near the middle of the captain's back. She ran a fingernail delicately against several of the stitches; they appeared sturdy and taut and she was satisfied that they would hold long enough for the body to heal itself. She nipped the end of the thread and wiped at the area with a warm, wet cloth before applying clean linen.

"Can you lift your arms long enough for me to put dressin' on?" Simcoe released the bloody rag he had been holding to his face and sat up stiffly, linking his fingers together behind his neck. Anna quickly seized a roll of stripped linen and pressed the end to the covered wound. As she pondered how to both hold the end of the roll and pass it around the captain's midsection, long fingers retrieved it delicately from her own hand and moved it from left to right. She accepted it appreciatively and the fingers returned to their perch behind the closely-cropped copper hairline. The second pass was made far easier by the linen holding itself in place, and she was able to pass the dressing from hand to hand in front of him, fingertips brushing against his lean chest. Anna was suddenly very aware of their proximity and quickened her pace, wrapping the linen firmly across the now-dressed wound and tucking the end underneath at his side. He dropped his shoulders and prodded her handiwork experimentally.

"Thank you," he uttered politely, his voice not as even as he perhaps intended.

"Of course, captain," Anna dismissed as she gathered the bloody rags in the washbasin. He turned to watch her, adding his own bloody handkerchief to the bowl of crimson water. One of his unnervingly clear eyes stood out in stark contrast to the blossoms of red and purple that surrounded it, the result of a rogue pistol butt. Dried blood marred his light skin.

"You needn't entertain formality," he rubbed his good eye with the heel of his hand, "Do I appear as an officer to you currently?" Anna was quiet. He certainly was lacking the typical hallmarks of his captaincy. His ever-present wig was missing in the dead of night, and Anna got a rare look at the thatch of auburn he kept neatly cut beneath it. Instead of vibrant red wool and black spatterdashes, Simcoe lacked all but his breeches, hastily donned at the sound of intrusion. She considered the old and new scars that decorated him that she had never had the occasion to observe before; she could count several musket wounds without including the still-painful damage to his thigh. There was a triangular mark on the slope of his shoulder that Anna recognized as the intrusion of a bayonet. It would have been difficult to imagine Simcoe as anything but a saber rattler upon their first meeting. The then-lieutenant had never indicated his military ventures to her, and this changed little even upon his billeting at her home. But his naked torso told her more than she intended to learn. There were no battle wounds upon his back; only sun-spotted shoulders and the fresh knife wound were visible in the candlelight. Anna would have assumed that his refusal to turn a side in the duel with Abraham was stubborn pride for her sake. It was clear to her now that his wild fearlessness was no façade; John Graves Simcoe taunted death and faced danger fully and she thought him a fool for it.

The captain rose unsteadily, leaning more heavily on the table than he would admit. Anna was soon on her feet as well, offering him a hand which he refused.

"I'm afraid," he began, turning his attention to the intruders, a duo that now lay dead in a heap on the floor of the kitchen, "that I may require assistance in removing these reprobates from your home." She looked him over; it was almost comical watching him struggle with requesting support. Oft as she found herself uncomfortable at his efforts to ingratiate himself with his unsolicited aid, she happily returned the favor.

"You needn't worry about it, captain," she paused. "…John." His tired stare turned to her, an agreeable glimmer present behind the exhaustion. "Cicero and I can manage." He turned his stare back to the bodies; Anna thought he might protest as he eyed the mess of broken plates and scattered kitchenware, but he nodded again. "I'll have a clean washbasin up for you in just a moment if you can manage the stairs yourself." Releasing the table, the tall man took a moment to steady himself before making his way deliberately towards the doorway, pausing to rest a hand on her shoulder. A gentle squeeze preceded his absence in the room, and Anna felt herself release a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. 

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I do love feedback! Please let me know what you think; I'm actually pretty eager to write more for these characters. Statistically speaking, I can't be the only one who wants Simcoe to find love. Probably.


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